


Falling Heaven

by Runic



Series: Fire Emblem Non Explicit One Shots [21]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And now the star he has talked to every night is standing before him, Byleth is a star, Claude does not know what to do about this, Claude is a bit overwhelmed, Concept piece, Dreams, F/M, First Meetings, He just wants to fulfill his dreams, Nudity, Rating for naked Byleth, that falls from the heavens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28783029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runic/pseuds/Runic
Summary: When a star falls from the sky, the last thing Khalid expected to discover in the place it landed was a naked woman holding a sword.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: Fire Emblem Non Explicit One Shots [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1515215
Comments: 15
Kudos: 132





	Falling Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> This is a concept piece. The scene was in my head and did not want to leave, but I really don't want to plot out multiple chapters for it. I just wanted to make Byleth a literal star, okay? Let me have this.
> 
> Thank you to Anam for helping me look this over. <3

The warmth was seeping out of the ground, giving way to the chill of the night. Khalid sighed, wincing as he shifted his position and felt the stiffness in his limbs. The stars were so bright tonight, the moon hanging in the sky as if someone had flipped a silver coin into the inky depths. He would not be able to stay out here much longer, not with the cold gnawing at his extremities; but he did not want to go just yet.

Khalid sighed, holding his hand up, spreading his fingers to frame the constellation of the wyvern. Its eye, the star by which every Almyrans was taught to travel by at night, glowed bright. He blinked his eyes, shaking his head. The star was there, bright but no more so than usual. Just a trick of the eye then.

He must really be tired if he was starting to see things. Khalid forced himself up, stretching with his arms over his head this time, taking a long moment before truly starting to move. “Whelp,” he murmured, staring back up at the sky, “I’ll have to come up with something truly clever to run by you tomorrow night. Wouldn’t want to bore you.”

He realized he was smirking, but let it fall from his lips immediately. There was no one here he needed to charm, no need for those easy smiles that felt as if he were wearing a mask. No, especially not to the stars who listened to his crazy pipedream every night. Not that they answered back at all.

The bright light revealed that his clothes were covered in dust and grass stains. He winced, already imagining the disapproving stare his brother would level at him if he caught Khalid sneaking back into the palace. His father would throw his head back and laugh, at one time when Khalid was smaller pulling him onto his lap while Tiana sipped her tea and gazed fondly at her small family, her sharp eyes scanning the edges of them for danger.

But that was a far off world now.

Speaking of, when had the light gotten so bright anyways?

Khalid’s head shot up, staring back at the stars. The wyvern’s eye gleamed, becoming almost blinding as he stood. It flashed, the halo around it growing stronger with each pulse. Khalid lost sight of the rest of the constellation, and soon it overwhelmed the moon itself. 

And with a final flash, the star fell from the heavens.

It streamed through the sky, the wyvern going blind in its wake. Khalid was running forward before he even realized what he was doing, tracking its trajectory. He stumbled over unseen rocks, but he refused to take his eyes off the celestial object hurtling toward earth.

The star crashed without a sound, the rest of nature going silent around him. All Khalid could hear was his own strained breathing as he ran hard. The glow dimmed, but there was still enough light to guide him.

As fast as he had started sprinting, Khalid skidded to a stop on the edge of a giant crater. He silently thanked the dexterity training Nader had drilled into him during flight lessons. It was something one learned quickly or else found a wyvern shaking them off to land in the dirt.

Khalid blinked, catching his breath and letting his gaze wander down into the newly formed crater. “Well,” he murmured after a long moment of standing frozen, “that was not what I was expecting.”

Khalid was not sure if he knew what he was expecting, if he had even thought of it in his chase, but it certainly was not a naked woman clutching a strange sword to her chest. Was that bone? The light around her continued to dim, allowing Khalid to pick out more of her features. Her muscles were toned, the body of a fighter. Khalid blushed heavily when his eyes landed on her chest, tearing them away long after it would have been considered appropriate. He could barely pick out the mint green of her hair, it being the part of her still glowing the brightest.

The earth gave way under him as Khalid picked out a path down the side of the crater. He wound up slipping, sending his arms windmilling about to keep him on his feet. Thank the stars that none of his siblings saw him. They would snigger behind their hands every time he walked into a room for months. 

By the time he had flat ground under his feet again, the woman was beginning to sit up, her movements jerky as if all her joints were stiff. Not that Khalid could blame her if they were. She had fallen out of the sky after all.

And that was just the strangest thing he had ever encountered. There was no way he would believe her origins if he had not seen it for himself. Even now, his mind was searching for any explanation that was not  _ ‘she fell from the sky!’ _ So far he was failing.

She blinked at him as Khalid approached, her hair fading from green to a deep blue as the light finally winked out, leaving Khalid to see her now only in the light of the full moon. “Khalid?”

Khalid stopped short. She knew his name. Sure, she had said it like a question, her tone lifting at the end of the word even though her face remained flat and inexpressive. She rose on shaking legs, falling as soon as she tried to stand straight, the sword slipping from her grasp.

Khalid rushed forward, not using his brain for the second time tonight before finding himself in a reckless charge, and really he was going to have a talk with himself about that behavior. His arms wrapped around her, pressing her close. His knees buckled under her weight, but together they managed to keep the strange woman on her feet.

Her eyes locked onto his, Khalid forgetting how to breathe. This woman was throwing him off completely. She nodded, the movement sharp, as if she had made a decision. “Khalid.”

That was no question. She recognized him.

“I am Byleth,” she introduced herself succinctly in that same strange monotone. “I came to help you.”

“Um,” was his rather intelligent response. She shifted against him, making Khalid very aware that he was holding a beautiful naked woman in his arms. She was warm, her full breasts pressed against his chest. There was something wild, almost feral, to her, that did nothing to shake Khalid’s growing interest. “In what capacity, exactly?”

Byleth was busy staring down, shifting her weight back and forth testing the strength of her legs. “To help with your dream, of course,” she answered, as if it would have been obvious from the beginning.

“My dream?” Khalid repeated. All those nights spent hoping and planning beneath the stars, of craning his neck skyward. “You heard?”

Byleth finally looked back up at him, her gaze softening at something she saw there. “Of course I did. You were talking to me after all.”

“I didn’t realize you were listening.”  _ I didn’t realize stars could hear, _ he just managed to keep himself from saying instead.

Byleth nodded grimly. “I heard you. From the first time you declared your dreams to us even with tears in your eyes, to when you were making your escape back across the Throat.”

Memories flashed past him; of the first time he had truly realized how his family viewed him and he had fled the palace. He had declared he would break down the walls separating his bloodline, promised it to that long ago night sky. He had been so small then, and yet his dream had grown with him, only to come crashing down around him after Gronder field. There had been so much blood in the air he could taste it. His own had seeped out as he made his desperate escape. The prayer he had whispered to the stars then was only of survival. He had come home in disgrace, with no foreseeable path back to his dreams, which had only grown to include all the world’s borders.

He was always fleeing it seemed. Could she be what he needed to set himself back on course?

And then the anger hit him. “If you came to help me after all that, why not sooner? Why not before everything collapsed around me? I have lost everything! What is there left to save?”

Her eyes widened ever so slightly, Khalid would have missed it if he were not studying her face so intensely. It was the most emotion Khalid had seen from Byleth yet, and somehow it drained all the rage from him just as suddenly as it had come, leaving him more exhausted than anything else. 

“It…” Byleth trailed off. Khalid could see her searching for the words, struggling to make sense of a concept that seemed foreign to her. “Time and distance are strange things for stars when compared to your own understanding of them. When I realized how in jeopardy your dream was, I decided to come, but Seiros and Cichol tried to stop me.” She pointed skyward when Khalid’s face creased in confusion. She pointed first at the wyvern’s fangs, “Seiros,” and then its antlers, “Cichol.”

“Those are the Fódlani names for them.” And in Fódlan the wyvern was called a dragon. Khalid turned his gaze to Byleth. “And your star was called Sothis.”

“They are one of many names for us,” Byleth agreed. “Among the oldest. As for Sothis, I am what is left of her.”

“You know, I’m going to have a lot of questions about how this society of celestial bodies works.”

The barest twitch of her lips had Khalid smirking widely. “I figured you would.” 

She removed her hands, still wobbly, but managing to stand on her own. She bent down to pick up her sword, Khalid’s thoughts once more screeching to a halt at the sight of her. He was going to be in danger if she kept doing that to him.

Khalid unwound his kandys from himself, wrapping it around Byleth’s shoulders. His fingers brushed against her skin, realizing the warmth he had felt before had not lessened. 

“Why did they not want you to come? The other stars,” Khalid clarified, wincing as the words tumbled out of his mouth without any of his usual charm.

Byleth stared at the garment around her, looking at Khalid and adjusting it so that it covered her in the same manner Khalid had worn it. “I forgot about clothes,” she murmured.

_ I noticed, _ Khalid caught himself before he could say.

“As for your question,” Byleth continued, “they did not want me to come because we are not supposed to interfere in mortal affairs.” She pulled the kandys tighter around herself, more as if to have something to do rather than for its warmth. “While I still have many of my powers, this form weakens me. I may very well not have enough power to return.”

Khalid sucked in a breath. She could not mean - 

And yet that was exactly what those words implied. “You gave that all up for me?”

She stared at him, her blue eyes staring through him and weighing his soul. “It is a beautiful dream you spoke of. I could not sit back and let it fade away.”

She was his ally. She had given up a life of immortality in the heavens to help him. Khalid was torn. For so long he had been on his own, he had not trusted to have anyone close, not since the first night he had cried under the sky and offered his promise to the stars. He had promised Byleth he would make his dream a reality without even knowing it.

He would be going against that dream if he did not accept her help. Byleth believed in him enough to offer her aid, and Khalid was not one to turn away a useful tool. A tool. A tool, he kept repeating, as if trying to convince himself. It clashed against the part of him that was rising, wanting with a desperation he was trying to squash and deny, that truly terrified him, that wanted to accept it all as she had laid before him.

“All right then,” Khalid said with a nod, offering Byleth his hand. “If that’s the case, we’ve got work to do.”

Byleth stared at his hand, slowly extending her own. She held her hand next to Khalid’s, looking back to him questioningly. Khalid wrapped his fingers around her wrist, waiting until Byleth mimicked him before shaking. She caught on quickly, but Khalid was beginning to realize the true scope of the work before them. He would have to find out just how much Byleth knew about human society.

And yet there was something about her that made Khalid want to prove himself worthy. There had not been a fire in him like this since the first time he had crossed the Throat.

Byleth smiled as she shook his hand, soft and small, and yet it was as if she had turned the power of the sun on him. “You are much more handsome from this angle than from above.”

Khalid choked on air. Oh yes, he was in danger.

  
  



End file.
